Camaro Z/28 Meets 2019 Silverado HD

The 2019 Chevrolet Silverado 4500HD/5500HD/6500HD trucks are each powered by a 6.6-liter Duramax diesel engine with 350 horsepower and 700 lb.-ft. of torque and Allison transmissions with a Power Take Off (PTO) option. They are brawny work trucks.

Which might lead you to think that the only thing they might have to do with a Chevy Camaro is that someone might drive a Camaro to go to work in their HD truck.

However, that’s not the case.

It goes to the grille. Specifically to the Chevy bowtie emblem.

Back when the 2014 Camaro Z/28 was being engineered, it went to the wind tunnel for aerodynamic testing. It was discovered that the traditional solid bowtie shape on the grille was displacing airflow into the radiator. Propulsion engineer Richard Quinn took a cut-off wheel to the emblem, and removed the gold fill from the form, leaving only the silver outline.

That was tried out in the tunnel and it was discovered that there was more air, better cooling, which is important for a car like the Z/28, which can spend some serious time on the track.

They called this modified bowtie a “flowtie.”

The badge is now standard on the 2018 ZL1. Which brings us back to the heavy-duty 2019 Silverado. It, too, is now fitted with a flowtie up front. The duty cycle of a truck isn’t exactly that of a Z/28, but it is no less demanding in its own way.

Says design manager Kevin O’Donnell, “The flowtie is an elegant solution. And it’s going to work on the Silverado exactly the way it does on the Camaro.”